Devil By The Sea (10 page)

Throughout the last year, she had gone beachcombing on every possible occasion. One October afternoon, shortly after she had
come to Henstable, she had seen a set of false teeth floating on the scummy tide. She had kilted up her skirts and waded into
the cold water, a curious excitement mounting within her. From that moment her afternoon walks had led her, almost as if some
power outside herself had willed it, to the edge of the sea.

In the beginning, she looked only for things of value: wedding rings, silver coins, conch shells that she could sell to the
flower shops as rose holders. But as her mania grew, she dropped all pretence of financial gain. She collected anything and
everything; broken crockery, sodden garments, the bodies of dead gulls soaked in oil. She took home what she could and hid
it secretly in her room. She found it increasingly difficult to reject things that could not be concealed at home: finally
she found an empty petrol drum in a cave and there she stored the things that would decay and betray her. As her treasures
became
more important to her, she grew cunning. She had keys made for her drawers and bought an old wooden playbox with a padlock.
She locked up carefully when she left her room. She trusted nobody.

This afternoon, she was unlucky. After the tennis shoe, she found nothing except a child’s toy boat, its sails draggled by
the sea. She disentangled the seaweed from the tiny mast and held it tenderly between her hands. She had fleeting thoughts
of painting it blue and scarlet and mending the little sails but she knew she would not do this. She never mended anything.

She glanced casually up at the cliff. Although she knew she could be seen from the top of the cliffs, their high, sloping
angle meant that the details of her activity were safe from prying eyes. Seen from that distance, she would look like someone
shrimping.

She recognised Hilary reluctantly. For a desperate moment she pretended to herself that it might be any child. There were
plenty of children with red hair. Then she saw her duty and feared it.

She must call out to the child, order her down to the beach and take her home. But she would have no time to dress: by the
time she reached her clothes, Hilary would be out of sight. The child would have to see her as she was and her long, happy
afternoons would be over. She saw her cherished occupation through unfriendly eyes as ludicrous and shameful: she saw, as
vividly as if she stood before her, Alice’s disgusted face. Her treasures would be torn from her, thrown disregarded into
the dustbin. Henceforth, she would be watched continually, spied upon. They might even suggest that she was mad and have her
put away.

At this thought, Auntie’s face folded like a baby’s. She began to whimper softly. Knee-deep in water, she shivered,
hugging the toy boat to her breast. Up on the cliff, the child slipped and a stone rolled. Auntie hid her eyes with one, wet
hand. Then, her face averted, she left the sea and ran heavily on her old, veined feet towards her clothes. She scrambled
into them, her harsh breathing sounding like a wind instrument. The beach watched her with a thousand glittering eyes; the
wide, empty silence mocked her cruelly. Panting, she fastened her cloak at her throat and made for the Hundred Steps. Their
steepness almost defeated her. Half-way up she was forced to rest, clinging like a cripple to the slender rail. At the top
she was too exhausted to carry out her intention of looking for Hilary: unusually bent, and leaning on her stick, she walked
in at the gate of Peebles.

Alice, standing with her back to the drawing-room window, was visible from the garden path. As Auntie approached the front
door, Alice flung out one hand in an emphatic, accusing gesture as if she were engaged upon a violent argument with someone
in the room.

Auntie was relieved to see her. She had been afraid that Alice would be out, searching for Hilary. Now, she could tell her
where to find the child. She had nothing with which to reproach herself: it had all turned out for the best. She had acted
as promptly as she could and in the only possible way. She could not have climbed after Hilary. Even if she had been nimble
enough, she was too heavy for those crumbling cliffs. And if she had shouted, Hilary would not have heard her: her old, thin
voice would have been blown to silence by the wind. Much better to have done as she did, to have dressed quickly and hurried
home for help. Convinced and comforted, she entered the house and pushed open the drawing-room door.

Janet, seated before the empty fireplace, was in tears. Alice remained where Auntie had seen her, at the window.
Her face was scarlet and her hair disarranged. Unable to hear, Auntie sensed her anger, a solid force barring her from the
room. Like an actress in a silent film, Alice mouthed, gesticulated: Auntie shrank back before the violence of feeling that
came from her.

She closed the door softly and retreated up the stairs. She could not face a scene, she was too old, too tired. Besides there
was no need. Hilary was certainly on her way home. Why otherwise, should she have climbed the cliff?

By the time she was safe in her own room, Auntie was convinced there was nothing further that she could have done.

The cliffs stretched for five miles between Henstable and the next town along the coast. They were not part of Henstable like
the Downs which were maintained at the ratepayer’s expense and they had a bleak, forsaken look. They were, however, a favourite
walk with the stouter of the town’s ageing population and during the thirties, a dying and prosperous fishmonger who had quarrelled
with his wife and saw no reason why she should live, after his death, in a manner to which his disposition did not entitle
her, had provided the money for the building of five shelters on the cliff, one at each milestone.

When Hilary reached the top of the cliff, she went into the seaward side of one of these shelters and saw, through the glass
partition, a middle-aged couple eating a sandwich lunch on the other side.

Her hunger became intolerable. She walked round the shelter and confronted the couple. “Could I have something to eat?” she
asked. “I’m hungry.”

They stared at her with bulging, unbelieving eyes. The man’s face grew very red and his neck seemed to swell above his coat
collar.

“Whatever next,” he shouted. “Whatever next? Damned impertinence.” Little specks of foam appeared on his lips. “Get along
with you,” he commanded in a strangled, military voice, “or I’ll call the police.”

Shame immobilised her. She stared with wide eyes, expecting him to rise from his seat and strike her. Then she turned and
stumbled away. His voice pursued her, borne by the wind.

“You can say what you like, Myrtle. It’s none of our business, none of our business at all.”

Hilary ran inland, away from that terrible voice, into the fields where the sharp, wheat stubble pricked at her ankles and
drew blood.

At the beginning of the second field, beyond the ditch, she came to the pipes. The pipes were a relict of a building project
that had been abandoned when it became clear that this part of the cliff was being slowly swallowed by the sea. They were
about fifteen feet long and made of cast iron. There was a large, official notice saying that anyone who removed or tampered
with them would be prosecuted by Order.

She began to jump up and down on the pipes, singing in a loud defiant voice. Once or twice, she laughed out loud in an affected
manner to show the man in the shelter that she didn’t care. Then she forgot about him and decided to crawl through a pipe.
This was an exciting and dangerous business because once you were properly inside a pipe, there was no retreat. It was impossible
to turn round and difficult to go backwards. She selected her pipe and wriggled into it head foremost. The metal was cold
against her skin and smelt of damp and rust.

She was half-way along when the circle of light at the end was blotted out. She lay, trembling and shaking, in utter darkness.
Then, perhaps because her fear was too
great to be borne, she accepted her destiny. On her elbows and knees, she moved forward into darkness.

When the light returned as suddenly as it had vanished, her faith was vindicated. She wriggled to the end of the pipe and
poked out her head. The whiteness of the sunlight made her blink and it was some seconds before she saw, about two feet away
from her and on a level with her eyes, the skirt of a black coat and a heavy, misshapen boot.

She remained quite still, her hands gripping the cold edge of the pipe. She was not surprised. She even gave a small nod of
satisfaction as if to say: this is what I expected, after all. She had already met Him twice. If He were really the Devil,
they had not been chance encounters. They had been written in her stars. A spring of gladness rose within her. There was no
more need to be afraid. Confidently, she raised her eyes and smiled in welcome.

“To think that this should happen, to-day of all days,” said Alice. “As if we hadn’t enough to worry about.” She added, sweepingly,
“How
typical
of you.”

It was hardly fair. Janet smarted beneath the injustice of it.

“It’s
my
letter. You had no right to read it.”

Her shocked voice reduced a principle to a smug, school-girl standard of values that was easy to dismiss.

“No
right?”
Alice was trembling from head to foot.

She had had a difficult day and was spoiling for a row. Her own fears for Hilary’s safety had, initially, been diminished
by Mrs. Peacock’s prophecies of doom. These had grown momently more theatrical: listening to her, Alice had been forced into
a position of unnatural calm. There was no real need to worry. It was absurd to make a fuss, impossible to see Hilary as a
tragic victim. The child liked to be the centre of attention: she was bound to return,
in search of an audience, if for no other reason, as soon as her temper had subsided.

By lunch-time, however, when there was still no sign of her, Alice was forced to admit that the matter was more serious than
she had allowed herself to believe. Nagged by a feeling of guilt, she telephoned Charles.

He asked her when Hilary had gone out and when she told him, said, “You’ve left it long enough, haven’t you?”

“I thought she’d come back.” She was aware of the weakness of her excuse.

His anxiety made him hit out at her. “You’ve never cared a damn about the child.”

“Oh,
Charles”
She was caught off balance by the unfairness of this remark. She said, in a sad, indignant voice, “Am I such a bad mother?”
and waited, confidently, for his swift denial.

It did not come. “Sometimes I think you are,” he said nastily and replaced the receiver.

Alice could not bear criticism. Now, she took Charles’s unkindness more seriously than it had perhaps been intended. She plunged
into an abyss of self-hatred and despair. She had neglected Hilary, she was a failure as a mother. Her handsome face took
on a downcast, mutinous expression that was remarkably like her daughter’s.

To occupy herself, she began to tidy the drawers in the dining-room. She found Aubrey’s letter crumpled among the table napkins.
Ordinarily, she would not have read it but, at this moment, wallowing as she was in her own vileness, she felt a driving desire
to degenerate further. She was a wicked woman, Charles had as good as told her so, why should she stop at reading a private
letter?

She read it. The prose was more pretentious than passionate: clearly, it had been written primarily as a literary exercise.
But to Alice’s distressed mind, the implications
seemed clear enough. As she read, she was filled with a painful, rising excitement.

“I worship your mind as dearly as I worship your body… As for Milly, why should my soaring love be confined just because once,
long ago, I promised a silly, stupid girl to love and cherish her? There was nothing solemn about that promise, either. It
was made in a registry office in a dreary provincial town. Milly wept with her hands folded over her big belly because she
was not being sacrificed in a white dress and orange blossom. Her mother wept with shame. There was no gladness, no champagne.
Nothing but beer and lamentation. I felt trapped—lonely and afraid in a world I had not made. Can such a sordid ceremony be
valid?”

Alice smiled briefly at the absurd, almost legal crispness of the last sentence. Then, crumpling the pages in her hand, her
own feelings of guilt were transposed into outraged anger. She had tried so hard to be a mother to this motherless girl and
this
was how she was rewarded. She saw her spasmodic kindness, her good intentions, as a whole-hearted devotion. Throughout lunch,
she watched her stepdaughter with smouldering dislike. She could barely wait to confront her with her ingratitude.

Now she repeated, “No
right?
Your father and I are responsible for you. Sometimes responsibility means doing something that may not be in the best of
taste.”

“It was none of your business.” Janet answered her primly. As often happened when she was nervous, her mouth tightened into
a mulish sneer. Alice had always found this a peculiarly ugly and unloveable habit: it was associated, for her, with endless
scenes of childish temper.

“Do you really think it is none of my business when you behave like a tart?” Seeing the immediate horror in the girl’s eyes,
her righteous anger mounted. “Is it none of my
business when you break up some poor woman’s marriage? You think you’re clever, don’t you, my girl. Hiding behind that girlish
innocence. Sweet seventeen! No one would believe it of you, would they? I must say, you took
me
in.”

Alice’s face was crimson. Her arms made violent, meaningless gestures, strands of hair escaped from their carefully moulded
braids.

“I thought butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. To think we trusted you, we thought we’d brought you up to behave decently.
Did you never think of the disgrace to
us.
Suppose you had had a baby?”

Distantly, through the mists of excitement that enveloped her, Alice was aware of her own voice shouting in the strident vowels
of her childhood and of Janet’s wide, stricken eyes. The girl had sunk down on to a hassock and her eyes seemed to grow larger
and larger as if they would devour her face.